Day by Day

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

After fraudulent claims about Himalayan glaciers, African crop harvests and Amazon rain forests, plus a 2007 assessment report based on anecdotal evidence, student term papers and nonpeer-reviewed magazine articles, the panel's doomsday forecast for Bangladesh has been exposed as its latest hoax.

According to the 2007 report, melting glaciers and polar ice would lead to rising sea levels and just a three-foot rise would flood 17% of the low-lying country of Bangladesh by 2050 and create 20 million refugees.

Now comes a study from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) that says the IPCC forgot to factor in the 1 billion tons of sediment carried by Himalayan rivers such as the Ganges and the Brahmaputra into Bangladesh every year.